


Losing Sight

by ardemis



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Missing-Nin Haruno Sakura
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:08:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25758592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardemis/pseuds/ardemis
Summary: Sakura has always longed for an outstretched hand to hold onto, but there's only one hand that feels right in hers no matter where he wants to lead her.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	Losing Sight

There are things Sakura would have done differently. If she could've held this team together. If she could've prevented him slipping through her fingers. If she had known then what she knew now. The "what ifs" kept her up at night. In a cold sweat beneath the covers, she listened to birds of prey outside, crowing as they circled the village in search of something weak enough to dig their talons into. And she wished they would come for her and put her out of her misery.

She imagined ways to bring Sasuke home, back to the light, back into the arms of those who loved him. But mostly she pictured all the things she'd done wrong when she had that chance. How she had acted stupid and selfish and embarrassing. Sakura thought she had really known him, but that boy only existed in her perception of him. She had always concealed her feelings behind a veneer of sugary clean and polite falsehoods, but rarely considered that others were any deeper than what they appeared to be on the surface.

It was nearly impossible to sleep. On the nights she was able to drift off, she woke screaming from the nightmares her guilt had created to cage her. And every day he didn't come home, hope slipped further away. 

Her mother was growing tired of her miserable spirit, and she let Sakura know as much.

On top of her heartache, it hurt more than Sakura would admit to know that people– her own mother among them– thought she was crazy. Not a dangerous unpredictable sort of crazy, but a delicate pitiable inconvenient sort. It hurt more still to truly feel like she was the only sane one left. The very moment Naruto and his rescue team had returned from their mission empty handed, the village cut off its sympathy for Sasuke Uchiha. It took only one failed attempt to write him off permanently as a criminal, someone who nothing could have ever been done about and no more should be done for. Naruto, of course, wouldn't stand for it. He made a promise to her and he'd be damned if he didn't keep it. So he vanished, right when she needed someone– anyone– there to hang onto. And it would seem everyone had deserted her. People she had once been so close to now acted as though they couldn't understand her _obstinate_ mournfulness.

“Why would you even care about someone who left you behind?” Ino asked her a week after he had gone. Quickly looking for a new comparably attractive, less disagreeable target for her affections. To her Sasuke was more a challenge or a hobby than a friend. And when it seemed too much trouble to harbour feelings for him any longer, she nonchalantly cast them off.

“Do you want everyone to think you're weak?” Kakashi-sensei chastised her two weeks after he had gone. Funny that it was only now that he started paying any attention to what she was doing or feeling. Now that it was too late.

“Haven't you gotten over it already?” her mother asked her a month after he had gone. A month that felt like an eternity, but it was only a month nonetheless. Sakura realized that there was a limit to how much grieving a mere spectator could put up with. To the grieved moving on was never really done because one felt ready, but because it was expected.

But the months rolled on and still Sakura wasn't done feeling this. Maybe she wouldn't ever be done. She imagined herself aging alone, in this room, dust collecting right here on her bed, as regret and heartbreak weighed her down years from now, just as heavily as today. The fantasy was a pitiful sort of comfort. She couldn't envision a day where she didn't wake up screaming, her sheets drenched in sweat and tears. She feared a time where she wasn't exhausted with sorrow. The alternative was simply, nothing.

It wasn't until a visit from the Hokage herself that Sakura was coaxed out of the house. To a certain extent, her company was reassuring. Tsunade knew what she was feeling. She had lost the one she loved, and blamed herself badly. Because of this hint of understanding, Sakura let herself be lured into training, and growing attached to her new master. At least, for the first time in a long time, someone had their eyes on her. At least somebody stood by her in all her inconsolability.

A year passed like this, Sakura growing stronger but no less miserable. She still didn't know why she was doing this, aside from the faint notion that putting her body through hell took the edge off her heart– on some days. Other days her master dragged her half lifeless body out of bed to at least hone her mind. This rarely did much good. Emptying her mind was a hopeless endeavour. No matter how still she sat or slowly she breathed, her synapses still fired off thoughts of him.

"Does it ever stop hurting?" Sakura interrupted their meditation one day to ask.

Tsunade cracked one eye open. "No," she replied bluntly. "But he isn't coming back."

Sakura bristled, feeling patronized. "He's not dead."

Tsunade sighed, all too patiently, as she gave up on the pretense of meditating. "You don't know that." 

Sakura's mouth scrunched up tightly in resentment. She couldn't help feeling that somehow she did. 

"And even if he's not, you can't force him to come back unless he chooses to. If he wanted your help, he would have taken it when he had the opportunity. Like how underneath that broken heart, you were hoping for someone to reach out their hand and pull you back from the edge. Even if I wasn't the someone you were hoping for."

"Don't do me any favors," Sakura heard herself say in a huff before she could filter the thought out.

Tsunade smirked. "Forget about me then. Maybe you're right and he can be saved. But if that's the case, don't you owe it to him to keep getting stronger? If the day ever comes that he needs you."

Sakura shrugged her shoulders in spite of her crossed arms. "I guess," she let out before setting her lips in a resolute pout.

That was her excuse to go on. Sakura began to like getting stronger. But she reminded herself day after day that she survived so that Sasuke would have something to return to when he was ready, and he would be ready. On days when worry outweighed her unwillingness to die, she poured over medical texts. She consumed all she could find; she memorized, took notes, and reread. She pleaded with Tsunade for more information about seals and curses, the more obscure the better. It didn't have to be practical research, a theory or a legend would be enough of a start.

When she saw him again over a year later, it was like the carefully constructed shelter Sakura had built for herself crumbled on her head. Her heartbeat was deafening in her ears. Her eyes and hands and lungs ached to cry and reach and scream. He was as beautiful as she remembered and more. Sasuke's striking impassive expression still held a well of sadness at bay. And when he spoke her name, she had to send a surge of chakra to her knees to keep herself on her feet. She might as well have been paralyzed where she stood for all she could do to convey the pain she had endured to bring herself here.

And watching him vanish, brought back the same pang of loneliness she had felt on the night he first left her. She no longer wanted to scream or fight or tie him down. Two years of resolve washed away in one wave of memories, and again she longed to follow him, stumbling, down whatever twisted path he took, and keep him company along his way.

* * *

When Sakura returned home, she still trained. She still struggled, outwardly, to survive. She even tried to meditate more. She packed away her text books, and hid any shred of evidence that she was still weak. She went outside, without being dragged. She exchanged pleasantries and ran errands as though they were simple tasks and not an exhausting practice of normality.

Ino took to her reenergized self immediately. "It's good to see you're over it!"

Her former sensei was nearly smug. "You've adjusted well, for a while I thought you'd quit."

Her mother pushed harder than ever. "Maybe now you can start looking for a husband."

"Next time, Sakura-chan, we'll get him for sure!"

Sakura repressed the recurring urge to reduce Naruto to rubble that wrung her stomach like a wet rag. How did he not get it? They had been so wrong this entire time. It was an undertaking of vanity to chase after him, an arrogant sense of false righteousness. The fact that they had been allowed to search for him at all was a facade to placate their jinchuriki.

Even if they managed to bring him back– biting and clawing the whole way for all Naruto cared– what would he have to come back to? A community of uncaring strangers. A life in prison, if he kept his life at all.

At night she let the lifelessness she had buried resurface. Sakura lay still and embraced the numbness that overtook her, indulging in her old fantasies of despair. She contemplated a slow and elaborate suicide. If she maintained appearances meticulously enough, she could gradually waste away without anyone detecting her deliberate decision to die.

Her ideation consumed her to the point that she wasn't surprised, but filled with relief the night a hawk scratched the pane of her balcony door. At last something had come to devour her the way she desired. But no such fortune had arrived, only a messenger. Sakura fumbled silently with the catch on the door and let her visitor in, retrieving the small scroll carried in its talons. The bird perched on the back of her vanity chair, waiting with a piercing stare as she smoothed the paper with trembling fingers. 

_Sakura_

_The pain in my eyes has become excruciating._

_It's getting harder to see._

_I can't lose my dojutsu now._

_I still have goals I must accomplish._

_Leave the village._

_I'll be waiting_

She read the note and read it over again. The paper crinkled in her fingers as she gripped it tightly, unsure if it was real. She turned back to his hawk, eyes pleading.

"You can take me to him?"

The hawk inclined his head toward the paper, its look almost quizzical. Her eyes followed. This could be a trap. By all logic it ought to be. It would be child's play to bring her to him just to kill her. But wasn't that what she wanted anyway? Being separated from him was no different from being dead. A soft sob escaped her throat. The invitation taunted her with his control over her. He had to know she would come. The academy, the village, the Hokage, none of them could hope to entreat her to point her loyalty toward anyone but him.

Feeling dizzy, she sat down on the corner of her bed. The message sat beside her as her hands gripped her knees. Sakura pondered the last time she kissed her mother. She conjured a picture of her father's smiling face. She questioned if regrets could ground her to this place when, against all odds, he had come to her for help.

Sakura knew there were more people she was about to hurt, but they would carry on. If they kept going after they lost him, then she was little more than a dip in the road to her fellow ninja. Maybe Ino would mourn. But Sakura couldn't work up the compassion for her. Maybe it was time her friend felt loss. Maybe her mother would see the division she had crafted with her long suffering looks. 

It was cruel to think like this. But Sakura welcomed it. She felt like being cruel. She never could've told a soul that she had begun to agree with his reasons for leaving. When had Konohagakure reached out a hand to amend the suffering they had incited? When had those who could have answered her questions set aside vagueness and dishonesty to assuage the growing discomfort of injustice that pressed down on her. She couldn't forgive them.

Sakura had no excuses left for the village that had let her down at every turn. She had seen how her homeland pointed its own children at its enemies like a weapon or a shield without remorse. No matter how grown up they might have felt at the time. She had felt her humanity eek away with each and every followed order until she was unfit for any other vocation. She knew on the other side of this letter was the only man who understood these things too. There was never any choice for her to make. She knew as well as he did, she would come where he called her.

Sakura tucked his note into her shirt, beside her heart. She gathered a small bundle of tools and her medical supplies. Reflexively she picked up her forehead protector, ready to put it on for the long mission ahead. She slid it into her pocket instead. She wouldn't be representing the Leaf anymore. 

She nodded to her guide. "Take me to him."

She didn't turn back, even to shut her balcony doors. Her eyes stayed ahead of her as she raced toward whatever fate awaited her. She would bear it.


End file.
